Abstract

An outbreak of paralytic poliomyelitis occurred in the Dominican Republic (13 confirmed cases) and Haiti (8 confirmed cases, including 2 fatal cases) during 2000–2001. All but one of the patients were either unvaccinated or incompletely vaccinated children, and cases occurred in communities with very low (7 to 40%) rates of coverage with oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV). The outbreak was associated with the circulation of a derivative of the type 1 OPV strain, probably originating from a single OPV dose given in 1998–1999. The vaccine-derived poliovirus associated with the outbreak had biological properties indistinguishable from those of wild poliovirus.

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